The Seers of Menlo Park

Abstract

This article considers the emergence of the postmodern reflexive consumer through an archival case study of one particularly influential lifestyle magazine, the Whole Earth Catalog. This publication is read in the context of the cultural and lifestyle innovations of the ‘new cultural intermediaries’ (Bourdieu, Featherstone) of the 1970s, expressed in a new print media of lifestyle advice. In this print culture, consumers were taught to cultivate a reflexive awareness of their lifestyles through an enhanced sensitivity to the deeper meanings of market messages and consumer choices. On the basis of the advice of non-traditional lifestyle intellectuals, market choices acquired a sense of ‘deep play’ (Geertz) in which the well-being of the self and the planet emerged as the specific stake of lifestyle choices. Combining archival research with theoretical and historical analysis, the findings of this study offer an alternative to postmodern studies of the new consumer culture, which focus on the depthlessnessof consumption as a form of ‘pastiche’ (Jameson).